5 Ways to Optimize Your Online Store's Checkout Page

11/21/2017 4:06 PM

Recent statistics show that more than 60% of online shoppers will abandon their cart during the checkout process. Because of this, you should focus on optimizing your checkout page as well, not just the landing pages, call to action buttons, or product pages.

You can easily implement the tips we’re about to talk about in this article by understanding what drives your potential customers away.

By applying these ideas, you’ll be able to improve the amount of revenue your online business is generating.

Let’s get right into it.

1. Establish Trust

In most cases, people don’t really have a reason to trust your company when they’ve just discovered it on the internet.

You’ve probably seen these logos and badges before when shopping online, and you probably didn’t realize it at the time, but they did influence your buying decision.

There are multiple security seals you can use, such as TRUSTe or VeriSign Secured. But you should test this out with various choices to see which one works best for your online store.

Another way you can use to establish trust is to provide contact information on the checkout page. Your visitors will feel like they can actually talk to someone if they have last-minute questions or if something goes wrong during the checkout process.

2. Guest Checkout

One of the main reasons why people abandon their carts is because they’re being forced to create an account. If a customer is pleased with the experience they had with your online store, they will most likely come back and create an account.

Our advice is to provide the option to checkout as a guest. You can, however, ask them only after they’ve completed the order if they want to create the account.

3. Remove Friction

There’s nothing more annoying for online shoppers than having to go through a complicated checkout process.

Imagine that you found a product you wanted for a long time, and it has a fantastic price. You’re excited to buy it, and you add it to cart. Then, the next thing you see is a landing page that has plenty of form fields you need to complete with your personal information.

The email address and the physical address are mandatory, but what about other fields?

Remove any fields that are redundant and make the checkout process as easy as possible.

4. Add a Progress Bar

Uncertainty can increase your cart abandonment rates. People can’t know how long your checkout process is going to take and what may happen after they click that “next” button.

Adding a progress bar will eliminate the uncertainty your customers may feel because:

It motivates them. Your customers will know how much they’ve completed because they will see the progress they made.

It will tell them what the next step is. That way, your customer will know that they have the chance to review their order before placing it.

5. Add an FAQ Section

Even after they land on your checkout page, customers will still have some questions and doubts in the back of their mind.

To be able to address the questions they might have, we recommend adding an FAQ section on the checkout page. If you don’t know what questions your customer may have, you can use a tool such as Qualaroo to ask something like: What’s missing from this page that would convince you to place the order?

After you have your answers, take them and create the FAQ section. It should include no more than five questions.

Conclusion

The best way to go about these tips is to test them out, see which ones make sense for your online store and can increase your conversion rate.

Every eCommerce business is different and so are your visitors and customers. Remember that even a small change can go a long way, so test, test, test.